Hope in Denny's
“I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.”
Ezekiel 34:16
There is chaos on the other side of the country in our capital, people working long hours in order to try and bring protection to us. There are countless numbers of families grieving the hearts that stopped beating on account of someone else's violent act. There are family members of the perpetrators of violence who are grieving and we seem often forget them. There's evil and darkness and the smoke is so think you can't see your hand in front of you and it seems it may never clear.
Conversations about the dire state of the world, the Holocaust, injustice, crying, and the fall of man are the casual topics my friends and I discussed in a Denny's at 11pm on Monday night. We laughed a lot and ate pancakes with white chocolate chips. We passed food around, stealing from each others plates, our hands growing sticky from the syrup while we talked about those hard things. The terrifying and ugly being exposed under the bright lights of Denny's made them seem a little less terrifying. We didn't come to any significant conclusion about the state of the world or the why behind these things happening. The only semblance of a conclusion we landed upon as our plates grew empty was
hope is a crazy thing.
One of my friends pointed out how humans are so much stronger than they think. We can overcome immense heartbreak and loss, we can withstand the constant change of life, and we can be faced with so march darkness falling into crippling fear is definitely possible yet we don't. We cling to hope. Hope is like when you are in a pitch black room, so dark and so quiet it almost seems unreal, and then the tiniest pin of light appears. It could be as small as a key hole, but the minute the light hits the darkness the dark begins quickly loosing its power.
I thought it was funny this conversation came up because the same morning I had changed my phone wallpaper to a little design that says, "Hope Changes Everything." I had been feeling expectant hope would show up and give some meaning to the confusing and then it didn't show up. But in Denny's I realized hope comes wrapped up in packages we don't expect.
There is hope emanating from four college girls forgetting responsibilities for pancakes and laughing until they cry at 11pm on a Monday night. There is hope breathed heavily in cold soccer games where the underdog made the finals. There is hope shown in the broken hearted admitting others in the midst of despair. There is hope pouring from a God who promises to search for us when we are lost, bind up our wounds, and strengthen us.
There is hope.
